


Service

by hedera_helix



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Bottom Erwin Week, M/M, Sexual Content, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:54:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedera_helix/pseuds/hedera_helix
Summary: Entry for Bottom Erwin Week 2017 - Day Three: Submission.





	

The muddy, trampled ground slipped beneath their feet as they marched. It made the journey feel longer and their destination seem further though they could already see the steeple of the church, the tiled roofs, the wisps of smoke rising from chimneys – though now that Levi thought about it, he supposed they might have been rising from burning houses, or from cookfires lit outside rather than in. The path they followed had once been a road and amidst the craters and bomb holes it felt to Levi as though it must have been built by an ancient civilisation, long ago when there had been no war and things had still been built, not torn down. Now it slithered past the destruction, avoiding it where it could, and they went where it led them: toward the town, around the hollows full of murky, stinking water. And to think the front line had never been closer than twenty miles from here.

Levi looked up from his muddy, war-torn boots at the back of his Captain who swayed back and forth as his horse fought to keep its footing on the soggy ground, the riding crop threatening to fall from his loose grip. He was slumping in the saddle; exhausted, just like they all were, but weighed down by more than simple tiredness, Levi knew. The man had told him as much, let his guilt slip through wine-tainted lips as he had held onto the sleeve of Levi’s coat, hungry and desperate. That had been the start of things, that liquor-laced confession that turned first into a request and then a plea. And even by then they had seen too much together for Levi to ignore it. Even by then he would have done anything for the man, anything at all, far beyond the call of duty. Far beyond any ordinary task of a simple soldier-servant.

Half a mile before they reached the town, it began to rain, a steady drizzle that pushed through their clothes and made them close their hands into fists against the cold. Levi could feel his breath falling short by the time they finally dragged themselves past a broken-down gate, entering the town through the old cemetery by the church, slipping past the tombstones, bearing much resemblance to those who lay underneath them. He caught a few names here and there: Beauchamp, Lavigne, Giraud, they still felt foreign on his tongue. The Captain had dismounted his horse. There was something skulking about the way he walked, like with every step he was apologising for disturbing the peace of the deceased, though Levi could have told him the bombs ought to have woken them up some time ago, if they indeed were the waking kind.

The priest of the parish limped up to meet them, leaning heavily on a cane that threatened to sink into the soft ground with every step. Levi walked up to the Captain, listening to the soft French he spoke with the old man. He offered them shelter: in the church for the men, and in a small priory nearby for the Captain. Levi knew the invitation included him, and he could see the envy in the eyes of the men as he took the reins of the Captain’s horse, leaving the rest of them behind to slouch up the steps of the draughty old cathedral.

He took care of the Captain’s horse first, as always, brushed it and cleaned its hooves and left it chewing on a bit of hay in the empty old stable. He could feel his body aching from the march, from the cold, from the useless attacks they had attempted the day before. He could hear the men talking about it when he joined them in the church for a humble meal, made better by the day-old bread they were given by the good people of the parish. They were cursing the Captain’s name under their breaths, muttering misfortunes on him when they thought Levi couldn’t hear, wishing the Captain and his orders a swift voyage to hell. By the time he left again, once he was done caring for his own equipment, Levi was aching from those words too.

He saw the riding crop on a small table by the entrance. It drew his eyes as soon as he walked into the room, but rather than stop at the sight of it, Levi continued further, catching the figure of the Captain in a chair by the window. He picked up the man’s coat along his way to him, roused the man from his reverie with a soft tap on the shoulder; they hardly needed words anymore. The Captain turned to look at him, something unseeing in his gaze as Levi kneeled in front of him and removed his boots, carrying them to the simple washroom built from stone, with little else in it than a basin and a tub and a heater for water in the corner; already warming, and Levi was glad someone else had gotten to it first. Levi cleaned the dried and wet mud off the Captain’s clothes and moved on to his weapons, though the task felt twice as taxing for the simple knowledge that on days like this the Captain seemed near as likely to use them on himself as he was on the Germans.

Levi never really felt it while he worked; it was as if something kept those thoughts at bay, as if he’d split himself in two that way. He still didn’t feel it when he used the little stove in the corner of the bedchamber to make a cup of tea, or when he carried it over to the little table in front of the Captain. He stopped in front of the man, grunted a reply to his absent “thank you.” He was looking out of the window at the lifeless orchard beyond, eyes still sharp, like he could see something of substance beyond the mist and rain. Levi wondered whether he thought someone was looking back at him; whether he thought the fallen men had followed them across the church yard.

“Is there anything else you need, sir?” Levi asked him, and when the man didn’t look up added, “Before we start.”

It was as if the words had brought the Captain to life, or at least to the knowledge of Levi’s presence. He turned around fully in his chair, eyes flashing as he glanced to the riding crop behind Levi.

“No, that will be all, Lance Corporal,” he muttered, going quickly back to avoiding Levi’s gaze, casting his on the tips of Levi’s boots instead.

As he watched that discomfort on the Captain’s features, it occurred to Levi how much it bothered him that the man would still feel such shame for it, after everything, after how much it gave them both. In a clumsy attempt to ease the Captain’s embarrassment, Levi nodded curtly and walked over to the door; he could hear the man moving behind him even before his hand closed around that worn black leather, finding its place on the handle. When he turned back the Captain was standing, waiting a little awkwardly by the chair he’d just vacated. Levi wasted no time in marching to it and sitting down, picking up the cup of tea he’d brewed moments before.

“Smith?”

“Yes, sir?” the man replied, his voice naught but submission and service.

“Once you’ve cleaned my boots you should brew yourself a cup,” Levi told him, sending the man to his knees, and shivers down his own spine. “It doesn’t make much of a difference with this fucking mud everywhere, but I still want them spotless. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Smith replied again, removing Levi’s boots firmly yet gently, hesitating for a moment before uttering a quiet, “Thank you, sir.”

Levi nodded and watched as the man vanished into the washroom. He could hear him scrubbing the mud off the leather as he drank his tea, turning to look out the window as well, trying to see what the other man saw out there. His fingers kept returning to brush against the riding crop whenever he lay down his cup. It had grown into a habit during the months they’d done this, like there was something about that artefact that helped Levi shift his mind to what the other man needed. He was always hunting for that relief, that moment of absolution on Smith’s face – that moment when he could no longer remember. There had been other things that had helped: sharing stories, drinking, working him to the bone. But this was the best way, the most efficient, the most effective, and even now Levi could feel it, that jolt and burn that smouldered both in his groin and mind. If he did right by the man, they would both get what they wanted tonight.

Levi took another sip of the tea, savouring the bitterness of it, which tasted better than the thin, watery mess they drank in the trenches. A knock on the door sent him to his feet and put an end to the sounds of Smith’s working; a maid with a pile of folded-up linens in her arms. Levi accepted them and lay them down on the bed before returning to his chair, smiling a little when he could hear the swooshing of the brush starting again. He finished his tea, holding out his cup when Smith walked into the room.

“Sit with me when you’re done with the tea,” Levi told him. “And light a few candles. It’s getting dark.”

“Yes, sir,” the man accepted at once, setting the pot noisily on the stove.

The clumsiness with which he did everything reminded Levi of how useless he had been with everyday tasks at the start and how much instruction he had needed. They were mostly things he had never needed to do for himself before, let alone for someone else, and it had taken much of Levi’s restricted reserve of patience to teach him. It was still what made this difficult; having someone do his bidding didn’t feel natural to Levi, and sometimes it didn’t even feel good. He had fought against the very opposite of it too, when he had joined the army, when he had been assigned to care for the Captain. Everything he had done those first few months had been conscientious but grudging, he’d had to force out every “sir” through a wall of teeth. There was nothing left of that anymore. Now – with all he had seen and done – caring for the Captain was the only thing that still made sense. The only thing he fought for.

Levi followed Smith with his eyes as he went around the room, lighting all the candles he could find. After the darkness of the trenches, where even cigarettes had to be smoked doubled over, the room felt bright and inviting, somehow warmer than it had when Levi had walked in. Smith joined him by the window, sitting on a rickety chair he had carried over from the stove. He had poured his own tea into chipped cup which he held without a saucer, and though Levi knew it wasn’t by far the most primitive thing the man had used to drink from, he couldn’t help frowning at even this small punishment he wanted to inflict on himself.

“Do you reckon it’ll rain through the night?” Levi asked Smith who sighed into his cup.

“I’m afraid it’s likely, sir,” he said, his voice sounding even lower for the note of melancholy in it.

“We’ll be up to our eyes in mud again in a day or two,” Levi said and swore. “Makes me dream of staying clean for even a week – hell, might as well ask for three days.”

“Would you like me to draw you a bath, sir?” Smith asked him; Levi caught his hand closing nervously around his cup. “It won’t be very warm, but it’ll still be better than nothing.”

Levi agreed in a grunt. “You’ll need to wash too,” he said and Smith’s grip seemed to tighten even further. “We both smell like shit.”

“Yes, sir,” Smith agreed; so dutiful that Levi could suddenly see what he must have been like as a young soldier.

“But only after you finish your tea.”

They fell quiet, turning again toward the window, though the darkening grounds yielded nothing for them to see other than each other’s reflections. Levi surveyed Smith’s for what must have been the thousandth time. To him every aristocrat had always looked ugly as sin despite the fine clothes they wore. But not Smith. He was a beautiful man by any standards, like his features reflected the nobility of his character, the courage, the simple decency. It never ceased to confuse Levi how others did not see it and he was half convinced it was because they chose not to, because it was easier to hate the Captain than to soften your heart and understand him. He had fought hard to do just that before, but hadn’t come close to realising the man’s burdens until the first time he had picked up that riding crop; even now, Levi knew they were only the shadows of the Captain’s torments he glimpsed on these evenings of repentance and deliverance.

They emptied their cups and Smith left the room. Levi could hear the splashing of water while he undressed himself, leaving the clothes onto the simple, wood-framed bed next to the fresh linens. The riding crop he took with him and placed on the basin where the black leather drew a harsh line against the white porcelain. He felt Smith’s eyes on him when he walked across the bathroom and climbed into the tub; his gaze hovered between his legs, an unnecessary reminder of the nature of the night.

Smith washed Levi’s body without speaking, and Levi wondered once again whether the silence was as comfortable for the other man as it was for him. Speaking seemed dispensable; they spoke better with their bodies, their eyes and hands and quiet mouths drawn to smiles or tight lines. When Levi ordered Smith to undress, he did so without hesitation, uncovering first the broad shoulders, the arms that had once been fuller but had wasted away to reveal the sharp angles of elbows and wrists. His chest was a little sunken and his ribs were beginning to show through the skin that had once been unblemished but now bore a map of their battles. Levi had tended to all of those wounds. He could call each scar by a name, as foreign-feeling as the ones drawn onto the gravestones. Soon he traced them with the washcloth – gently, as if they had been drawn on the man’s body only that day.

He let Smith leave the room first, staying behind to empty the tub though he knew he wasn’t supposed to be the one to serve. He caught glimpses of the man as he gathered the dirty bathwater into a bucket, emptying it outside under the small window; it made no difference to the soggy muddiness of the ground. When Levi finally entered the other room, hand twisted around that comfort of worn leather again, he found Smith hovering by the stove, warming himself, blood rising to his cheeks from the heat. Their eyes met and all Levi needed to do was nod toward the bed. Smith followed this wordless order as if it had been a call to arms; a chance for discovery and self-sacrifice.

Levi watched as the man climbed onto the bed, getting on all fours before pulling up a pillow and pressing his forehead against it. He kept looking, recognised the ready submission, wondered what exactly Smith would need from him tonight. Even now, he could never tell from looking alone; he needed to touch, to feel the subtle changes, the tensing and relaxing of his muscles, the way he behaved under his gaze – how deep and piercing was his shame. Some nights he had begged to be freed from his burden, giving up so readily that Levi barely needed to nudge him. Other times he had held onto it, built walls out of the disgrace of it and forced Levi to bring them down with force and discipline. And still, Smith never failed to respond. It was all a matter of how long it took him to get there.

He lay the riding crop down on the nightstand where Smith could see it before joining him, taking his place behind him. The bed protested loudly as he shifted his weight on his knees. Levi could feel the man flinching under that first touch, when he lay his hand on the small of his back. The skin underneath his palm was smooth and warm. It prompted the second touch; Levi let his hand slide up Smith’s back along the spine, forced him to press closer to reach the soft undercut at the back of the man’s head. He caressed it with his fingertips, ran his thumbs over it, hoped the small circles he drew into the skin of Smith’s neck would relax him; the man was as tense as Levi had ever felt him.

“Get up,” Levi whispered, urging Smith on with a small tug on his hair.

The man got up onto his knees without hesitation, pressing his back against Levi’s chest. Levi wrapped his arms gently around his waist, running his hands up to Smith’s throat to feel the sigh he let pass through his parted lips. He kissed the space between his shoulder blades, leaned his forehead against his strength as he guided Smith’s arms up, feeling his soft, reaching grasp entwining into his hair when he moved his touch lower, over the hard nipples and the hollow space below his ribs. Levi closed his eyes and marvelled at how familiar a path Smith’s body made for him, how it made no difference whether he saw the movement of his own hands or not. He was never fumbling in the dark nor touching the other blindly; and Smith knew it too, responded to it like a soldier who trusts the lead of his commander even when he can’t see what he sees.

Slowly, like taming some wild thing, Levi began to tease the man to make him still more obedient, to make him show how fully he could surrender. It was best done like this, Levi knew. The first time he had rushed things, expected too much and given too little – a mistake he was not likely to make again. Once or twice, when his own patience had held long enough, he had kept at it until he’d heard a soft plea from Smith, the quietest prayer for release. It had set his heart on fire. After everything Levi had lived through, nothing seemed to get him hard but Smith’s pleasure, seeing it, feeling it. Hearing the man beg, if ever so subtly, had been new and unexpected, and Levi had been more than willing to grant the wish. He doubted whether he would last long enough now; but Smith was already beginning to tremble.

Levi continued to run his hands slower, scratching softly at the man’s thighs, at his hips, at the base of his cock, never letting anything touch the manhood itself unless it was a brush of his wrist or the side of his hand. He felt it swelling, his own body mirrored the changes as he pressed closer, twisting one of his hands loosely around Smith’s neck. He could feel the man’s heavy breathing better than he heard it, felt the first low groan when he finally pulled back the foreskin to circle the fleshy, wet tip with his thumb. He left the touch lacking in everything but the knowledge it had happened; the twitching it left behind was proof enough of that.

“God help me,” Smith gasped, and Levi chuckled quietly.

He kept at it, attentively, patiently, counting Smith’s sighs and moans that were soon joined by his own. His hand grew wet from the slick, his fingers tightened their hold gradually around both the man’s neck and his cock, though the latter touches there were never lingering, never more than mere reminders of what Levi could do should he choose to. Smith’s own fingers grasped at Levi’s hair ever more frantically, the arms he had lifted above his head started to shiver from the strain but he never complained. Levi praised him with kisses, pulled him down from his throat to reach one onto his lips; an act of petty theft he couldn’t resist.

Not until he’d heard that sweet breath of “please” from Smith’s lips did Levi move his hand between their bodies, fingers slick with the petroleum jelly he had stolen from the gun storage before they left the barracks. He slid his hand from the man’s throat into his hair, pushing him back down onto the mattress; Smith’s sigh of relief was near a thing he could feel and hold. Levi flinched at the touch of his own hand when he coated his cock. He could already feel that odd mixture of melancholy and excitement growing around his thoughts. Things always moved too fast from here. These moments never lasted for long enough. By the end of it, these fractions of time he stole for the other man were never more than borrowed seconds.

The first push made Smith clench his hands into fists and Levi bite his teeth together to keep himself from growing overexcited. He placed his hand on the small of Smith’s back again, hoping for the touch to be soothing as he pushed further, waiting for the flesh to yield, for the man underneath him to come to terms with the sensations, the pressure, the acquiescence against which some corner of his mind was perhaps still fighting. The surrender came sooner than Levi had thought. Smith’s hands relaxed for a moment before closing around the sheets; from pleasure this time instead of discomfort. Levi watched him, followed his every move, cherished each moan he could hear through the goose down of the pillow. It made his own want gather quickly to his groin, made his kisses frantic and his hands desperate. He closed Smith’s cock inside his fist, moved first in time with his thrusts but soon fastened his pace, racing against the man’s panting breaths that grew closer and closer to sobbing, tried to catch up to the tensing of his muscles before they broke out into shivers. He lost by mere seconds. His own release followed Smith’s, felt born from it; he had never come before the other man. The force of his pleasure made him double over, made him hiss swears under his breath as he waited for it to start falling in its usual rhythm again. Underneath him Smith was going through the same, relaxing ever more from the ritual now completed.

They washed up quickly and returned to bed, lying down under the old, wooden crucifix placed above the headboard. Levi watched as the other man picked up the riding crop and spun it around in his fingers, humming out a sound not quite a laugh but still carrying satisfaction and ease. Levi marvelled at the change, the way those worries seemed lifted off the man’s shoulders. He felt lighter for it himself.

“Levi?” Erwin asked, and he hurried to nod. “You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle hidden away somewhere?”

Levi huffed a quiet laugh before getting up to rummage through the pockets of his uniform for the small metal flask he’d stolen from some dead soldier; he couldn’t remember anymore if the corpse had once been British or French or German, nor did he know exactly what was in the flask.

“You ought to mind yourself,” Levi told Erwin as he passed him the drink, “or you’ll end up like Pixis.”

Erwin chuckled. “There are days when that doesn’t seem like such a bad option,” he confessed, taking a large gulp and grimacing.

“They’ll probably have wine in here somewhere,” Levi mused, taking a sip when Erwin offered him the flask; the stuff burned his throat on its way down. “Could try and filch a bottle before we go.”

“Best not,” Erwin said, but laughed; Levi caught him glancing at the crucifix above the bed. “A poor way to thank them for their hospitality.”

They emptied the flask slowly, talking: about things back home, about days to come, about what they’d do when the war would end. Levi felt again, like he’d felt several times before, there was something Erwin wanted to say, a question that never quite got past his lips. Levi let it stay there; whatever it was, Erwin would ask him when he was ready – if he’d ever be. They laughed, but quietly – even now it felt a little indecent, like showing any joy in a place like this was an affront to the thousands fallen. They made love again, and it was always better the second time around, when they could be just Levi and Erwin and the pleasure came from nothing but hands and kisses. They fought against sleep – a losing battle, just like so many of the ones they’d fought, just like all the other ones that Erwin hated himself for.

And morning came too soon.

Levi was the first one up. The Captain needed his things put into order, needed a washbowl of warm water for shaving, needed his clothes tended to – there was a rip on the right sleeve of his jacket which Levi spent a while mending. When the man himself woke, Levi brought him his tea, passing him the riding crop absently in between tasks. Each time the man uttered a quiet, “Thank you, Lance Corporal”; it fell more and more easily from his lips. Levi helped him get dressed, helped him gather his weapons, helped him onto his horse once the time came. When they moved out, Levi kept his eyes on the back of his Captain, at the way he now sat straighter, his shoulders once again bearing that weight. Levi followed him, his steps falling lighter now. Once again hunting his happiness. Hunting that relief.


End file.
